Here's What I've Been Doing

I am not that popular of a girl. So sometimes, on Saturday nights, I find myself at home with the 1,000 cats, watching free Comcast movies. Tonight, it's Philadelphia, a Tom Hanks movie about a lawyer fired b/c he has AIDS. Normally, I hate Tom Hanks b/c of Castaway and Sleepless in Seattle, two movies that I think are highly over-rated. But he is pretty fucking good in this movie and his eyes are really blue. It reminds me of the only personal encounter I've ever had with AIDs. This guy I went to undergrad with, Chaz. I can't remember his last name. While we were in school, I was intimidated by him. He was this very vocal black kid who had a caustic sense of humor. I think that maybe he slept with this other guy I had a huge crush on in school, Michael Chick. And then, in my last year of college, my roommate Michelle and I went to visit Chaz in the hospital. Because he was dying. I recall going into his hospital room and feeling apologetic, not knowing what to say; he barely knew me. In the middle of our conversation, he had to get up out of the hospital bed and slowly make his way to the bathroom. He was not the person I remembered. No longer was he intimidating. He was pale and thin and not snappy. I think he's dead now. He must be dead. This was the early 90s, before better drugs, before HIV didn't mean a death sentence. That's it. It effected me because I realized that I wasn't really that far away from him; that I too was mortal. It didn't sit well with me. It still doesn't.